


What it Takes

by bogwitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Challenge Response, Character Study, Community: spnland, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-17
Updated: 2010-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogwitch/pseuds/bogwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It takes a special person to love a world that doesn't love them back.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	What it Takes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/spnland/profile)[**spnland**](http://community.livejournal.com/spnland/) challenge for the prompt 'devotion'.

With at most a car and a gun and a grin chock full of charm, Dean's never had much; but he gets by, so long he can add his family to the list.

He tells himself he doesn't need any more than that to be happy. Yet he knows he'll never get out of the world as much as he always puts in. It takes a special kind of person to love a world that doesn't love him back; to love the people he saves for no other reason than to know they'll be safe from the darkness that ripped his own world apart; it's hard, but he tries. That's the best he can do.

For however devoted he is, they all still leave. His mother is long gone and Sam turned his back years ago to walk out the door and out of Dean's life to go start his own. So when John takes off without even a word, Dean slaps on the smile and packs his guns back in the trunk and pretends that his life hasn't just fallen to pieces all over again. The search is to be a long, lonely road; but although Dean imagines doing something else in those dark hours alone at the wheel, he never once thinks of quitting the hunter's life, never pulls the car off the blacktop and just stops; even for a little bit.

He thinks instead of finding his brother.

Because Dean fights for more than the soft dew of a hazy morning on a mountain road or the smooth arch of a young woman's back as she succumbs to his rhythm, though he loves both of those things, and it's not just the satisfaction of ganking the monsters or the gleaming chrome shine of a freshly polished fender that keeps him out on the road, bouncing from hunt to hunt, keeping the dead from bothering the living. He doesn't do any of it for the rewards he will never, ever get.

As always, as with everything he does, he does it for his father; for a safe world for his brother; for his lovers and for the innocent. He does it for _family_.


End file.
